This blog is about all things travel and two South Africans Australians (we’ll explain later), Schalk and Lauren, taking mid-career gap years and embarking on extended vacations.
We have now travelled to a whopping 58 countries. However, the first 21 of these visits have been quick vacations where you jam in as many tourist sites as possible over a few days.
The 2016 Big Trip
In 2016, this was different. We wanted to take our time to get to know a place and its people, and immerse ourselves in the daily comings and goings, and make meaningful connections.
We have both been working in corporate environments, and this radical change was exactly what we needed. Lauren has always been a planner, and we were also used to our comforts and routines with very little spontaneity. So, having a ‘flexible’ travel plan put our relationship and sanity to the test.
The first destination we tackled in February 2016 was Vietnam, and we spent 35 days in this amazing country. Read some of the blog posts about our stay in Vietnam here. We then headed to Cambodia for most of March, where Lauren’s sister joined us for two fun-filled weeks of visiting the temples of Angkor Wat.
After a short stop in Singapore, we spent almost a month in India, mainly in Rajasthan. At the beginning of May, we spent just over a week in Nepal – our only regret is that we did not stay longer. We then spent some time in Calabria and Sicily, Italy, before heading to Rome. After a few days in Bavaria, Germany, we visited Spain and Portugal.
At the end of July 2016, we travelled to Iceland for a self-drive holiday. This trip was a little over a week and was certainly the highlight of our extended vacation, with gorgeous, picture-perfect scenery around every corner.
In August 2016, we headed to the United States of America and took our time to travel around. In between travelling on our own steam, we also had two periods in the US where we were house- and pet-sitting. We went on our first cruise in November and visited the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. We also ate so much that we hardly fit into our travelling clothes.
After the cruise, we travelled to Lima and then to Cusco in Peru. Here, we finally got to see Machu Picchu – definitely one that was on the bucket list. In the final part of this extended vacation, we headed to Bali, Indonesia and met up with some family and friends over the festive season before heading to our final country, Australia.
The Nov 2022 – Jan 2024 Trip
Australia has since become home, and six years later, we decided to take the plunge again and begin another big trip, aiming for 14-15 months this time. We now travel as Australian citizens, which should make visas much easier, as this had been a massive obstacle on previous travels.
We started our epic trip in November 2022. We spent 40 days in Chile, stopped for nine days in Peru and then moved on to Bolivia. After Bolivia, we visited Ecuador’s Amazon and Galapagos Islands before spending five days in Costa Rica (our 39th country).
Next, we spent a little over two months in Canada, doing some pet-sitting and seeing the Northern Lights. We decided to return to Iceland for a longer trip than in 2016, which still amazed us. Then we spent a week in Greenland enjoying the icebergs.
Ilulissat, Greenland, 2023
It had been an icy-cold three months, and spending late spring in Scotland was great. We headed to London as summer kicked into full gear, and we used it as our base for a few days before a spontaneous trip back to South Africa for four weeks.
After catching up with family and friends in South Africa, in July 2024, we flew back into Europe and had a great week in Switzerland before beginning a tour of Scandinavia, including Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The Norwegian Fjords were certainly a highlight and were utterly beautiful.
We then headed off and, in two weeks, covered Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in a whirlwind of tours. This took us 300 days of continuous travel.
We needed to head out of the Schengen countries for a few weeks in September to gain access again in October without overstaying our 90-day visitors allowance.
So Sofia in Bulgaria was our next destination (and outside of the Schengen area), with a night’s stopover in Vienna, Austria – oddly, this was the cheapest flight option, but we were thrilled to get to spend a night walking around this city.
We also visited Bucharest, Romania, where we, of course, made a trip to Transylvania. After that, we visited Türkiye and Montenegro. It certainly is a strange route, but Türkiye wasn’t on our plan until some cheap flight and stopover options came up, and Montenegro was highly recommended by some fellow travellers we met in Croatia.
We visited Germany next, where we met up with some friends from Australia in time to catch Oktoberfest in Munich. Then, we could explore a little more of Austria before going to Geneva. We wanted to see the Italian Dolomites and used Venice as our base before finally visiting France.
We then travelled to Bruges in Belgium, Malta and the Netherlands (a strange route, but flight deals make you do weird things!)
At this stage, our time in Europe was up, so we finally took the step to explore the South Island of New Zealand (we originally booked this New Zealand itinerary when COVID lockdowns hit, and it all had to be cancelled).
Our final destination was back to our ‘new’ home country of Australia (Dec 2023), where we spent some time visiting some of the wonderful places this country offers, like Uluru, and catching up with friends living on the other end of this great big continent. Our final pet sit was in Sydney, which gave us time to hunt for an apartment.
Overall, the 454 days went, more or less, according to plan. We managed to stick to our budget, secure pet-sitting placements, obtain required visas and adapt to a nomadic lifestyle (not to mention navigate pandemics and political uprisings). Surprisingly, our marriage has survived being together 24/7, and we can still make each other laugh. Our 2016 expedition was life-changing and was the best decision we could have made. We are thrilled that we got to do it all again (while our knees still work!)